4 practical ways to access the power of your subconscious mind

You are probably aware that you have another aspect of yourself – your deeper, subconscious mind. It is likely that you have encountered it’s nature during dreams or when you have listened to your ‘gut instinct’. You may not have realized the true potential of this part of yourself – being able to tap into your subconscious mind can introduce you to a version of yourself with more wisdom than you could imagine!

1. Free writing

This is a technique that allows you to tap into your subconscious thoughts and emotions. For the most effectiveness, try writing in the morning as soon as you wake up. Then you are more likely to be able to tap into the remnants of your dream experiences. Write as quickly as you can, without pausing to consciously think of what you want to write. Pay no attention to grammar, spelling or any of the usual things your consciousness tells you to mind when you are writing. The important thing is only to get down on paper what is in your head. The results may surprise you. Try it for a week – many people have found that this technique becomes an indispensable tool for keeping grounded and being able to access the deeper part of themselves.

2. Learn to meditate

Of all the methods of accessing the power of your subconscious mind, meditation is the most direct and most immediately effective. Learning to meditate is not difficult and studies have shown as little as 20 minutes a day can be very beneficial to your mental and physical health.
Meditation changes and deepens your brain patterns from the normal disorganized ‘beta’ pattern to alpha waves and through to delta and theta in deep meditation. In these states of consciousness your conscious mind is in much more direct contact with your subconscious. You will find that your thinking becomes much more creative and much less limited by the normal constraints of your logical mind. As you continue with your meditation practice you will soon be able to access the power of your subconscious whenever you please.

3. Seek your own counsel

There are many variations of this exercise but they all revolve around a central idea which is holding an imagined conversation between your conscious and subconscious self. You will find that this exercise will become more effective once you are more familiar and proficient with your favorite meditation techniques. Before you go to sleep at night, imagine you are sitting at a counsel table. You can invite as many or as few people to sit at the table with you as you like. You may just like to start with inviting just one other person – your ‘wise being’ or counselor. It is important to visualize your wise being with as much detail as possible. You may choose to ‘invite’ a departed grandparent, a famous figure, a person you admire or just a being of your own imagining. Realise that this person is wise beyond your imagining and holds the answer to all your questions. Sit and be at peace with your wise counselor and when you are ready ask them to answer a question that is troubling you. Sometimes the answer to the question may be completely unexpected and might greatly surprise you. Listen very carefully when this occurs as your subconscious is trying to tell you something important.
If you persist with this exercise regularly you will soon find that your wise counselor becomes more and more vivid in your mind’s eye and it will become easier and easier to converse with him or her. When this happens you have gained a pathway to your subconscious and truly unlocked the wisdom inside yourself.

4. Grow your creativity

The subconscious mind often prefers to speak through the non-literal and artistic language; whilst our conscious mind finds the more logical and concrete language more to it’s liking. Enable your subconscious to communicate with you by giving it the language to do so – paint, write, play music, draw… It doesn’t matter which artistic language you choose and you don’t need to be a natural talent. As long as you are expressing yourself artistically you are allowing your subconscious to develop.